


The Difference between Dreams and Nightmares is not Black and White

by Ardent_DayDreamer



Series: Born to be a Self-Inflicted Achromatic [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Indirect Chapter 5 Spoilers, Maybe there's a time loop?, No Henry, Original Character(s), Synesthesia, Total Color Blindness, What is planning, lots of references towards the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-11 03:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardent_DayDreamer/pseuds/Ardent_DayDreamer
Summary: Sixty years before Joey Drew and Henry Stein went their own separate ways. One had a family, a little broken, but still a family. The other tried to bring his dreams to life, only to summon a “nightmare”.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own BATIM. I only own my original characters.

It was a beautiful day outside. The sky was cloudy with cirrus clouds and the sun wasn’t shining too bright. Nicole was walking to the city library, there was a real life meeting there for her group concerning a project.

 

Nicole tilted her head as she saw her precious sister go into a slightly dilapidated apartment. Ah, it seems like she was going to that man’s home again. It looked like she brought her sketch book too. It was in that satchel bag she liked, but it was everything proof too; she wondered why she brought it.

 

It was weird; she could have sworn that her sister didn’t want to visit the man. Grandpa didn’t exactly talk about the man inside with the most, um, polite of words. Her precious sibling admired the old man a lot, and Nicole knew that her sister never brought her bag unless she was going somewhere for a few days.

 

Her sister looked back for a moment, her grey eyes flickered. Nicole would have missed it, but she knew her sister well enough to know that she saw her. A single wave from Riley, then her older sister knocked on the door of Joey Drew’s apartment.

 

Oh well, her older sister could handle herself. It wasn’t like telling the man inside that Grandpa was in the hospital would endanger her, right? Nicole shrugged and continued to the library.

 

It looked like she would have to tell her sister about the meeting instead of talking to her throughout the worldbuilding process. She wrinkled her nose. She hated having to write down what happened.

 

It was the worst part of the club, but making a reboot of the show…

 

It would be worth the effort.


	2. One: A Different Kind of Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Considering she was exhausted from running around all day and her mental fatigue from the shitake show she just went through, Riley thought that her reaction was a little justified.
> 
> She froze in surprise, her gray eyes wide behind her glasses. “Oh. Okay then.” Riley said, and then she fainted.

If there was ever a time that she hated her synesthesia, it would be around now. It kept popping up with everything she saw, heard, smelled and touched. It was a good distraction when she was in a panic attack, but not something to be done when running for your life.

 

…Not that she could stop doing it, even if she tried. It was the same thing with her total color blindness after all: something that she was born with, just like she had a really unfortunate second first name. Or her birth name in general when she thought about it.

 

Her footsteps echoed through the building, the sounds lighter than her usual thumps. She could hear the chase, the sound of great globs of ink falling growing closer and closer no matter how fast she ran away.

 

The scent of ink tore into her senses. She hissed as if being burnt alive; it didn’t feel like ink normally did. This ink ‘felt’ like fire, not the refreshing stream she ‘felt’ from the ink she used for her hobbies. It was strange and she hated the feeling.

 

She kept going, no matter how much her body felt like it was getting dripped in battery acid. That was all she could do. She had some precious cargo with her after all.

 

‘Well,’ she took a single millisecond to glance at the axe she strapped to her leg, ‘other from this lifesaver, although it’d be way too easy to replace if I lose it, so I guess it doesn’t count—‘“Okay, head back into the game Riley; weird ass shitakes after your ass here.”

 

Riley could have chopped the Searchers down with her axe, but they reminded her of those stories… the nineteen year old shuddered as she ran from the grasping hands of the Searchers. She couldn’t attack them.

 

Dammit, if her sister were here, Nicole would have already done it without blinking. Her sister could be very violent when pressed. Or even when calm, if Riley thought about it; one of her little sister’s classmates complained about getting stabbed by Nicole out of the blue.

 

She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time. She had to find a safe—of course! The Animation Department! The Searchers or the Ink Demon didn’t seem to come or go close to that particular area of the studio, so going by inference, it seemed to be like a haven from the ink.

 

With the general idea of a plan set up, she ran through the studio halls, unlatching the axe from its make-shift sheath. A few doors were boarded up, along with some general debris. She chopped them down as fast as she could, ducking underneath the boards if the Searchers got too close.

 

While she was still exhausted, she continued to run. It was her only chance of surviving besides killing the tortured things. Riley assumed they were tortured at least. The Searchers didn’t look stable.

 

She rested for a moment, resting against an office door; only for the door to open with her still leaning on it. Riley stumbled back, almost falling on the floor if it weren’t for her regaining her balance.

 

“Fffu-uudge.” Riley started to curse, before censoring herself. She looked around, searching almost blindly for her axe. This went on for a few seconds before the moans of the Searchers came closer, leading to Riley rushing to stand up.

 

She slammed the door shut. Riley took the chair Bendy pushed towards her, and she took a moment to thank the horned ink being who did so; before shoving it against the door as hard as she could.

 

“Thanks for the chair… needed that.” She said to the toon, her mind focusing on a basic survival plan. Riley would have to figure out something for basic sustenance, maybe those Bacon Soup cans?

 

She withheld a shudder. Those cans were sacrilege.  Bacon was meant to be fried not turned into soup. It was disgusting, but if it was her only choice… even if starvation was preferable, Riley would like to escape the place relatively intact.

 

Water was also a thing. There were restrooms, but since the pipes leaked so much, she didn’t think that she would be able to get an actual clean drink of water without a tiny amount of ink. She looked at the other being in the room in question. “So… how do you get water around here—and I just realized I failed a spot check.”

 

In front of her was Bendy. The actual Bendy, not the terrifying Ink Demon she saw earlier before she fell into the depths of the studio, but the Bendy that she saw in the posters; and those creepy cutouts. Now that she could see him in person, he was kind of cute. In the way that her sister was cute: an adorable devil that can and will laugh at your suffering as long as it wasn’t too gory.

 

Considering she was exhausted from running around all day and her mental fatigue from the shitake show she just went through, Riley thought that her reaction was a little justified.

 

She froze in surprise, her gray eyes wide behind her glasses. “Oh. Okay then.” Riley said, and then she fainted.


	3. Two: Similar Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riley stared into dark, pie-cut eyes.
> 
> The ink demon stared back.

Riley stared into dark, pie-cut eyes.

The ink demon stared back.

This went on until Riley had to blink, and Bendy danced in victory. The human rolled her eyes, her fingers tapping the ink-stained satchel on her side.

This was  _ proof _ that her friends and she were pretty much like characters of some sort of series. Most of them, including her that one time (unusual circumstances notwithstanding), would totally do a victory dance.

“You can’t talk, can you?” Riley asked, a brow raised as the toon seemed to miss the opportunity to cheer. A little weird, but from what she personally knew about Bendy and Friends, before the franchise tanked and all, they were just wetting their feet when it came to voices, instruments being an exception, so not entirely unexplainable.

Although she would have thought since they were alive… she derailed that train of thought. It wasn’t important right now. It wouldn’t be the first time that things were different from the norm; almost everything in reality was like that in the first place.

Bendy shook his head sadly. The action was in the exaggerated style she was used too. She could almost imagine the  **daw daw daw** sound effect that would accompany the action in cartoons. In fact, it almost sounded real, but unless… no, it must have been her imagination.

And sometimes in real life if she recalled the incident last week correctly… She liked cartoons, but having the sounds follow her around like that with every gag worthy act was annoying.

How Klaus found the time to cobble the camera and sound systems together though, she may never figure out. At least she knew why he did that, Alexander really was too persuasive at times... At least she knew  _ how _ the theater boy did it; at the very least.

“Alright, you can have this then.” Riley faked a sigh, her head lowered in an exaggerated manner, “You did win the staring contest ten to one.” She opened her satchel out of sight of the toon, slowly bringing out a pack of cookies. It wasn’t the homemade ones, but she was saving those for later; so she supposed it was a bit of a fair trade in the long run.

It was open when she handed it to Bendy. A bit of a habit, but she did not know whether or not those four digit hands could work on wrappers and the like. It was a safety (read: pride) precaution. The toon took it eagerly, somehow taking a bite of the peanut butter cream cookie sandwich despite not having a “proper” mouth. Riley’s seen weirder.

She stood up, rolling every single one of her joints. The popping sound made her smile, along with the minute amount of strain. ‘Ah, perfection…’ Riley thought happily, before glancing at Bendy.

He looked like he was enjoying the cookie, which was good. Poor thing must have been here for at least a couple of years, maybe decades if the amateur animator had to push it. That was just unfortunate and cruel.

She looked around, the axe she had in her right hand as she knocked on the walls, hoping for a way to escape that wasn’t the door. She didn’t like dealing with the Searchers. Why did she even call them Searchers anyways? Her hand slipped into her pocket, gripping a smartphone-like curio.

And then there was that project she and the rest were trying to do. Riley probably missed the weekly meeting depending on how long she was in here. She really hoped that her sister took some notes, or at least recorded something and not let Alexander write, because for someone named like a man who wrote 51 handwritten essays in six months, his handwriting was horrible.

She already had total color blindness; she didn’t need to have people make reading that isn’t on any sort of screen harder than it should really be considering her vision problems.

Bendy tugged at her clothes, his horned head tilted in curiosity. The cookie… and the wrapper… were gone. Riley hoped that the toon didn’t eat the wrapper; she knew from experience how bad an eaten wrapper could end up badly…

“Huh? Oh, just thinking about this whole place.” Riley told the demon, waving her dry but ink-stained free hand around the small office they were in. Her expression was wry as she continued. “There are… some things about this studio that I need to find.”

The ink demon looked at her in confusion before pointing at the door in curiosity.

“Yeah, I’m leaving.” She told the toon, walking to the door. She took the chair from its guard position and placed it to the side, setting her axe down first. With nary a care about the potential danger she could be in, she deftly picked the axe back up and continued to speak. “Although I wouldn’t mind bringing a couple of others along with me; it’s way too dark in this place, and the safety measures here went to heaven long before I existed.”

Riley was focused on the door, her eyes going through every groove like she was trying to memorize it. If she could find a pattern in this twisted place, she might be able to… her eyes darkened as a tiny smile grew on her face. She loved puzzles, and if she treated it like one, maybe she might have a clue about what could be going on.

A few seconds of silence; she got worried. Even if Bendy was different from the episodes she saw, the stillness wasn’t… standard at all.

Riley turned around. “Ben— ohshitohcrap—“ She flailed as the toon tackled her into a hug, dropping the axe as she hurriedly wrapped her arms around the rubberhose toon. It was an automatic reaction born from practically raising her sister by her lonesome when they were with their mother.

She landed against the door hard enough that she almost saw stars. The door didn’t open, but she hoped that there were no Searchers around the area, they would have swarmed to it the second they heard it. Or the cultist that had the same voice as Mr. Lawrence—that guy (or remnant if she was getting his general vibe right) was just creepy as fuck.

The toon on her chest nodded enthusiastically, his head bouncing up and down so fast all she could see was motion lines. She bit the inside of her lip, hard enough to hurt, but not enough to cut into the fragile flesh. This was… well, the back of her head throbbed.

“A-Alright then Bendy; seems like you want to leave too,” Riley said, a slightly pained grin on her face as she pushed herself against the door. The toon got off her a second or two earlier; she used that time to fix herself up, smoothing down her hoodie. It rose a little when the Dancing Demon hugged her.

She looked at the inkblot toon, a genuine smile on her face. “So welcome to the team. Please, call me Riley.” She hesitated for a second, something she was sure that Bendy noticed—she was a little too obvious at times—but held out her hand despite her subconscious misgivings about the gesture. It wasn’t like she was different from the others when it came to handshakes and agreements.

Bendy took her hand. His hand felt like… well, the accurate description would be rubber. It must be the ink though, and maybe the animation style if she had to hazard a guess? It wasn’t like she had an idea on how the Ink Machine worked.

The kicker was the other thing she felt. She half-expected to taste red, or even another sort of color, only to taste… okay, that was just gross, blood. The taste of sanguine liquid bled into her mouth. She fought off the grimace with practiced ease, focusing instead on her current situation.

“It’s nice to have you on the team Bendy,” Riley smiled, she tucked her hand into her pocket, “I heard a lot about you from my grandfather.” Ink-stained fingers brushed against a small piece of paper she took from the first floor, and she quickly took it out.

She shouldn’t stain the paper. Maybe her grandfather would appreciate it when she got out. He was stuck in the hospital for a while; maybe seeing something he made would be help somehow.

 

Riley had to hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
